sábado, novembro 18, 2017

Representation of Human: "The Odyssey" by Homer (translated by Robert Fitzgerald; read by Dan Stevens)

I humbly declare this book to be the greatest literary work of
mankind. If you don't learn Greek (worth it just to read this Meisterwerk,
never mind the rest of the immortal trove of Greek literature) you can read it
in so many translations that have become classics in their own use of the
English language, Fagles and Murray, just to mention two. Oh, what the Hades,
let's throw in a third, not just for its brilliant translation, but also owing
to the exotic character behind it: no less than Lawrence of Arabia.

The Homeric poems were sung in a less-enlightened time, in
comparison with the later Greek tragedies, and with the later epics too. Apollonius'
Argonautica was composed, post Greek Tragedy, and his audience would have been,
no doubt, familiar with Euripides' Medea. Questions such as how justice and
revenge affect societies were addressed by Aeschylus in the Oresteia; likewise,
the reception of the anthropomorphic gods, and their pettiness, was raised by
Euripides in Hippolytus and the Bacchae. Furthermore, the real nature and
brutality of warfare was also raised in the Trojan Women. Throw in how one
state views another state, and questions of racial identity, and you have The
Persians by Aeschylus, and Medea by Euripides. Additionally, if you include Philoctetes
by Sophocles, and the issue of how youth should conduct themselves is also
raised. If you consider, too, Ajax by Sophocles, and you find that the
bloodthirsty myths of an earlier age are filtered through questions that C5
Athenian society faced. What is better, the brute force of an unsophisticated
Ajax, or the sophistry and rhetorical arguments of Odysseus in Ajax? By the
time we arrive at Virgil, and The Aenied, brutal events such as the death of
Priam by Neoptolemus in Aeneid Book II, are tempered with a more enlightened
approach. Neoptolemus is condemned for killing Priam, and rightly so, as mercy
is important, and exemplifies the Romanitas of 'Sparing the humble, and
conquering the proud'. However, Aeneas doesn't show mercy in his killing of
Turnus at the end of Book XII.

I have always thought of “The Odyssey” as the story of a man
tainted, infected, by the corrupting virus of war who has to undergo a sort of
purging 10 year quarantine as he struggles to get home. And yet, in spite of
everything, he returns home still as deadly and full of murderous intent as the
day he set out from Troy. Indeed, as the day he first set sail from Ithaca. He
is a carrier of the virus of war, rather than a victim.

Odysseus is one of the most deadly and dangerous characters in the
whole of literature, as much for his friends as his enemies, and this intensely
human quality withstands everything the Gods can and do throw at him, as his
wife's suitors learn to their cost. Not vile, just deadly, in a very
individual, human way that the others who appear in the Iliad, who are more
symbolic of particular qualities than real, rounded characters, are not. He is
deadly in the way that a fisherman is, dreaming of his Summer holiday afloat
while he watches Christmas TV in Croyden, and a Great White, going about its
blinkered business in the deep, unaware of what fate has in store for it, is
not.

Odysseus is perhaps the first well defined representation of a
human, individual character, as opposed to a hapless plaything of the gods or
embodiment of some strength or weakness, in the whole of literature. His
imagination, his cunning and his indomitable will, his determination that if
anyone is going to die, its, first of all, his enemy, and failing that, the guy
standing next to him, makes him more dangerous than the most horrible monster,
the strongest giant and the most seductive witch the gods can chuck at him. What
chance does a bunch of soft, complacent suitors, unused to the possibility, the
probability, even, of sudden death that Odysseus has not only seen but dealt
out, have against him on his return to Ithaca, carrying the plague of war and
violence in him?

I see “The Iliad” as a rhetorical piece of writing. It is no
accident that Odysseus is the most beloved of Athena, goddess essentially of
being clever and Achilles is notably not (unlike Heracles, Perseus, Jason et
al). Achilles time is passing, the sheer logistics of the Trojan campaign which
Homer bangs on about in depth are evidence of that. The stylised combat is in tension
with the use of tactics, the honourable but suicidal tough guy has no place. It
might be personally satisfying but you're going to lose wars that way. But how
to convince proud people of this? Odysseus starts off wanting peace and hating
war, this is the seed of his cruelty. This is, I think, actually our modern
view of warfare as well, the less we revel in it, the more we demand
overwhelming victory.

For a number of years in my youth, I didn’t want to read
translations – I just felt that the presence of a third party between me and
the author’s words seemed more opaque than transparent. Getting a bit older, I
started to worry less about the issue (as well as a lot of other things) and
generally just read what I feel like reading, though I still remain vaguely
conscious of the translator at work when reading a translation. "The Odyssey" was
one of those cases that made me read the translation, because I don’t read Greek.

I think that reading Tolkien must have helped me in dealing with the
patronymics, since I didn’t have much difficulty with them. Are both Agamemnon
and Menelaos referred to as Atreides? I seem to remember this happening in my
reading, though it was usually clear which one the passage referred to.

Long before reading “The Iliad”, I picked up a lot of the story from
operas: Berlioz, Gluck, Tippett, and, yes, Offenbach, not to mention the
musical “The Golden Apple” by Jerome Moross and John Latouche. That last one
sets “The Iliad” and “Odyssey” in late 19th / early 20th century America, very
enjoyable, especially if you recognize the parallels. Right after finishing “The
Iliad”, I listened to Sir Arthur Bliss’ "Morning Heroes", his tribute to his
fallen comrades from the Great War. Its settings include two passages from “The
Iliad: Andromache’s” farewell, which I linked to in Alexander’s version, and
the passage in book 19 where Achilles arms himself for battle. I wanted to get
a sense of how Homer’s poem spoke across the millennia to others caught up in
war.

We see the same evolution in various forms of warfare since,
consider how the longbow had a rather unsporting effect on chivalry or how air
combat tactics changed between World War 1 and World War 2. I think this is
most obvious when Homer, trying too hard, goes on about Odysseus's macho credentials
as if he's saying, you can study for your exams and still play on the school
football team. It seems like those bits are added under some pressure to avoid
Odysseus seeming effeminate or weak and keep his argument on track.

It’s quite a carefully balanced piece of "writing" Odysseus
is; Achilles isn't so much criticised as, well, literally laid to rest. No one
would call Odysseus a pacifist, least of all me, and nor have I suggested that,
but he certainly doesn't show any psychopathic lust for war. He goes out of his
way to avoid war and conflict, but once he finds himself in that situation, he
uses his brain, rather than any kind of blood-lust or crazed all-out assault to
achieve his objective, which is to end it as quickly as possible and get home
to his wife in one piece.

It is not his responsibility, in all of this, to look out for the
Trojans.

As for the Trojan Horse, it woks out as the least costly solution,
in terms of human life, at least for the Greeks, to their Trojan problem, which
has been dragging on, at great cost in life and suffering to both the Greeks
and the Trojans, for many years. As for what happened to Troy after the Greeks
got in, that was a forgone conclusion from the beginning, and not the fault of
Odysseus. I'm sure he would have been totally satisfied with a civilised
arrangement at the beginning that allowed everyone to save face and go home
happy and alive. The Trojans resisted and paid the price of all cities that
resisted a siege, right up until relatively recently. They knew what would
happen to them and would have done the same themselves, in similar
circumstances. It was the rules of war, at the time. It made sense to torch the
place, kill and enslave the inhabitants, because it made them an example to
other cities in the future that might think resistance was an option.

Surrender was usually by far the wisest, if not a wholly palatable
course of action, faced with a foregone conclusion. The opposite of a pacifist
is not a psychopath. I think if you showed a little more empathy (a quality
alien to psychopaths, of course) for the situation and the times in which
Odysseus found himself, you might see things slightly differently.

As a tale, the Odyssey is a far better tale then “The Illiad” - the
latter I find is more like a bloated Viking saga "he was son of X who
gloriously killed son Y who was also a glourious son of a noble called C"
- more personal/psychological in its themes and hence more identifiable as a
figure, throughout the story Odysseus is contrasted with other figures like his
friend Achilles/Agamemnon, and in his travels he never trusts a person without
testing them first a far-fetched tale and only then does he either destroy them
or uses them to help him. It is one of those stories I love returning to again
and again. A tip to other potential readers of “The Odyssey”: trying listening
to the story on audio - as it was originally intended for - it's an even more
enjoyable experience.

I have a lot of things I want to read in 2018, but I think I'll fall short on a lot of them as usual. My re-read-project is the only thing more or less planned out so far (2017 was a good year in terms of re-reads, particularly in the SF field).